What's Become of Sluggo?

Wildlife rehabilitation is often a long road. Especially with box turtles. Sluggo is a longterm client. You may remember that he was hit in the spine by a lawnmower blade last summer. I couldn't do anything for the injury with its jumbled pieces of shell bone, so I gave him shots of Baytril, a strong antibiotic, to prevent infection, then just fed him and supported him in the ensuing year. 

He won't use his back legs. He has feeling in them, and he pulls them strongly into his shell when you try to pull them out, but he doesn't use them to locomote. He drags himself with his strong orange front legs.

Lisa Fosco of Ohio Wildlife Center in Columbus believes that that's because it hurts to use them. Will that get better? We can't say. But like anyone who has a loved one who's suffering, you cling to hope. 

He's a strong, beautiful gentleman with great color and a nice personality.

I took him in for evaluation at OWC. Lisa immediately set to picking and chipping at the dead shell and bone  around Sluggo's injury. 

The black part looks yuckky but it's actually a sign of healing. It's good, it's what you want. 

Lisa cleaned him up really nicely using her fingers and a forceps. I was wincing but Sluggo couldn't feel it as the bone she was removing was long dead. She pointed to a deeper triangular divot at the bottom of the wound and said she thought that was probably what was keeping him from using his hind legs. Sigh. He's not done yet. The hard part is not knowing if he'll ever be releasable.

To be honest, I thought I'd be leaving him in the care of someone who knows more than I do about such injuries, but Lisa wanted me to hang onto him. She made a good point, that he'd do better with individual attention such as I can give him (when I'm around, that is...) than as one of a bunch of patients in a rehab setting. So she sent him back home with me.

I took him out to see how he was doing.

He was tired of being in a cardboard box, that's for sure. I set him on the concrete and he peed in excitement. And then one hind leg came out.

He was making for the spiderwort tangle, and he really, really wanted to get there. And the other hind leg came out, the one I never get to see.

Truly, he more just dragged them than anything, but they were out and moving, and that's a huge start.

I thought that going forward I should try to get him to walk on concrete, because the second he got into the soft mulch he tucked them back in and dragged himself with his front legs.

Lisa showed me how to massage his legs, how to stroke his feet "so he knows he still has feet, knows that they're still there." 

I hope he comes to trust me enough to let me massage him every day. Right now he remembers getting injections there and he pulls his legs in when I go to touch them. 

I never visit the Ohio Wildlife Center without marveling at the job these good people face. Over 4,000 animals are admitted every year, the vast majority coming in right now through July. Rehabbers call it baby season. There were bunnies everywhere, little blind ones and ones that were big enough to nibble on dandelion greens and clean their faces with quick paws.

And there were baby ducks, standing in their food, dreaming of their mamas.

If you've any extra resources, please think of OWC. The people I saw hurrying around the clinic were so tired they were reeling and punchy, warmly accepting box after box of rabbits and thanking the kind folks who had brought them in. I left, resolved to keep working with my one little case, and in awe of the volunteer network the Ohio Wildlife Center maintains. And wishing I had a few lotto millions to shunt their way.

Feeding Sluggo

I am delighted to say that after taking his first two slugs on June 26,  Sluggo has expanded his dietary horizons from slugs to fresh cantaloupe, 

strawberries, blueberries, bananas, black raspberries, peaches and Repto-Min turtle sticks (the green things in this photo).

 I encourage him by soaking the Repto-Min in cantaloupe juice, or by pushing the dry sticks into fresh cantaloupe, where he can't help but devour them. Repto-Min is a wonderful complete food, that raises some mighty nicely shelled baby box turtles for me. Every day I put more Repto-Min in his fruit. He cleans it up!

Sluggo's housed in a 20 gallon long aquarium, with moist peat and sphagnum moss and some groovy shallow rock-like dishes just for reptiles. He's right under a south window, which gives him sun for basking. It's important to have water always available. Hurt box turtles often soak all day and night. It makes them feel better. You really have to stay on top of them, though, and keep that water clean, because they like to poopify their water. Choosing to poop in their water actually makes caring for box turtles easier, if a bit disgusting. Overall, it keeps their limited artificial environment a lot cleaner. About twice a day I'm taking sloshy poopified water outside to throw it off the deck. Ick. Worth it, though.

More than a month after finishing his injections, Sluggo's still not using his hind legs much. That's all right. They seem to work, in that he can extend and retract them. He'll get around to it eventually, and I'm not going to rush him. He's had a rough summer. And he still doesn't trust me to mess with his hinders. It takes box turtles a long time to trust someone who's once hurt them (with Baytril injections) but he'll get there. Every day he's a little more outgoing, and he'll eat from my fingers now.

 He can stay here as long as he needs to. I'll take care of him. If that means a year or two, that's fine with me. But we all look forward to the day when I can call the folks who brought him to me and tell them he's ready to come home. He'll be released right where he was found. Minus the lawnmower.

Many thanks to those who chipped in on Sluggo's treatment costs. I wasn't expecting that. Y'all paid for his Baytril, his Repto-min, his Tegaderm, his Silvodine cream and some very nice cantaloupe, and for that I thank you sincerely. You always surprise me, in the nicest ways, and fill my heart.